Aknon lay on his stomach on the ground and looked at the book, making sure he was looking at a single page and letting the light from the fire create words which only he could see.

"What if it's a trap?" I asked grumpily, looking at the blank page. "What if it's telling us to go in the opposite way? What if they want to lead us to our death?" I knew that if that was the case, then I really shouldn't be listening to Senka. Senka could be possessed by anyone or anything, the very thought of it was terrifying, but the soft spot I had in my heart for her would outweigh any of my paranoia.

"Then they deserve to kill us," Sarphi replied and rolled across the ground so that she was beside Aknon.

"You're so lucky there's a lake nearby," I commented with disgust as I noticed the dirt and mud beginning to cover her. "Aknon, what does it say?"

"Well, it's a prophecy."

"What?!" I exclaimed and leaped forward, very ready to do as I had said I would do and throw it into the fire, but he just laughed at me and pulled the book away.

"I'm joking." He shook his head and moved the book so that he was reading it again. "But it sounds like one. It's a letter."

"A letter?" Sarphi repeated. "Why's it in a book? Aren't letters usually just single bits of paper?"

"Letter?" Senka repeated, causing me to jump back ins surprise, since I was under the impression she was still asleep. She moved down my body, jumping and hopping until she was in front of the book as well. "Nice letter, big words, good handwriting."

"Unless they just wanted me to read it. But yes, letters are usually singe pieces of paper, unless you're Acer, who could honestly write a book with every letter they sent."

"I haven't sent many letters, why are you assuming that?" I frowned.

"Because you say enough to fill a book." Aknon cleared his throat, and his eyes scanned the page for the hundredth time. He sighed and shook his head. "It doesn't say who it's from."

"That's not the only thing we want to know." I sighed and sat cross-legged next to them. "What else is there?"

"Apparently, we're on the right path." He glanced over at me. "I don't know how it knows what path we're on, but we have to keep going. There's someone behind us."

"What?" Sarphi sounded like I had earlier, but a lot more serious. "Do you mean that we have someone hunting us?"

"Wouldn't surprise me."

"That's what it sounds like," Aknon replied, completely ignoring me. "Apparently we've made friends who will help us, but we need to be quick."

"Quick how?" Sarphi asked, pushing herself into a standing position. "Are we able to camp here for the night or not?"

"No," Senka replied. She looked up at me, her black button eyes seemingly growing bigger. "We need to leave now. Hurry up, harry up!" Her voice got louder and louder and she jumped to her feet, blowing uselessly at the fire, which we still hadn't gotten to use.

"Okay, no." I shook my head, "We are cooking our food and boiling our water before leaving."

"Acer, we're being chased by something dangerous," Aknon said, also getting to his feet. "Is it really the time to think of food?"

"Yes, because I'm starving, and you wouldn't exactly read out the letter that you could see in the book, and it could be a trap, and we could die of starvation before we get another chance to camp." I continued listing the various reasons as to why I was currently hurrying to cook the food and boil the water we had. "We've been chased by many things before."

"Not this thing," Senka argued, uselessly pushing against my ankle. "Come on Acer, don't be stupid."

"A doll is calling me stupid?"

"Acer, don't be so dramatic, we aren't going to starve." Aknon sounded even more frustrated. "We can build another campfire in an hour's time."

"No." I shook my head. "I'm doing this, you can help, and then we'll be on the road quicker."

Despite some moans and groans, that's what they did. We had little bundles of cooked food in one of our hands and we packed up the campsite. Senka wasn't too happy that we were doing this, but she also wouldn't tell us what we were running from.

But we began walking once again, much to my dismay. It seemed that something always had to interrupt our resting time, not that I would wish for any part of my day to be interrupted by pursuers.

It had been around an hour and a half of walking when Aknon spoke up, his tone thoughtful. "Do you guys think that the thing which is following us could be those eyes we saw in the field?"

To be totally honest, I'd forgotten about the very creepy eyes which hadn't been attached to any kind of body. Aknon had come up with some good reasons for their existence at the time, so I'd brushed them off.

"Eyes? What eyes?" Senka asked in her paranoid tone. I'd gotten used to it pretty quickly after an hour of this walk, she'd constantly been looking over my shoulder, muttering to herself in that voice which was slightly too high pitched for my sensitive ears.

"We saw eyes without a body just before we reached the wandering village," I explained with a small shrug. "It was terrifying, and I'd probably only see it in my nightmares if Aknon hadn't reminded me."

"Oh, this is bad, this is very bad." Senka raised her hands to her mouth, as though biting her non-existent nails.

"Why is it bad?" Sarphi asked, breaking her uncharacteristic silence. But she didn't get any kind of response. "Hey, fabric and straw, why is it bad?" Sarphi reached down and picked Senka up by her hair.

"Hey, hey, stop." Senka's body flailed in the air as her hands moved to clutch at her hair. "N-not telling, but it's bad." She sounded like such a child.

"So, it does have something to do with the eyes," Aknon concluded. "Thank you Senka, that was helpful." He moved his hands in front of his face, a very overly dramatic position for thinking. "It's probably the being who sent us the package, that's the only way they'd know where we were."

"Unless we're being tracked." I pointed out. "Spells like that aren't uncommon. It would depend on who we've bumped into, who hate us, and we haven't killed."

"Killed?" Senka screeched. "You were a baby two minutes ago." She looked horrified.

"We didn't kill anyone," Sarphi assured her as she placed Senka on my shoulder. "We used very good self-defence moves."

Senka held onto my jaw as I kept walking. "But why?" she asked, almost sounding innocent.

"Because we like living," Aknon responded, it seemed to be one of his catchphrases, as he's had to say that a lot during our travels. "If we didn't defend ourselves, we would either be experimented on, sacrificed or simply killed."

Senka remained quiet and hung her head, before snuggling up to my neck and pressing herself to my shoulder in a gesture similar to a hug.

I sighed and reached up a hand and patted her back. "You still didn't read that letter to us." I nodded to Sarphi. "We're going in the right direction and being chased, by what we don't know. But how do you know this? What were the exact words which were used? You know just as well as I do that wording is everything."

Aknon grumbled under his breath and shook his head. "It's hard to explain."

"How can it be hard to read something?" Sarphi hit her leg with an exasperated sigh. "Granted you need the fire, but was it not in a coherent language?"

My siblings and I were all rather skilled when it came to languages, since we'd been taught various languages from a young age. We knew enough to understand the gist of most conversations on this side of the continent.

"It wasn't like words on a page," Aknon admitted, his voice reluctant. "It was more like I could comprehend the lines and bumps, the texture of the book. It wasn't anything I recognised, but I knew what it meant."

"That's so strange, and that's hard for me to say." I shook my head and glanced back down at Senka, who was definitely holding out on us. "So, we just keep running int he right direction and hope that whatever's chasing us doesn't catch up."

"It's magic, that's what it is. Something's bewitched, whether it's us or the book. But even if it's magic, they'd need to know us to do the spell, they'd need to be close." I'm pretty sure that Sarphi was talking to herself, as her gaze was cast downward, and she was talking much quieter. "We must've met whoever sent them."

Senka's hold on my neck tightened.

"Of course we know them," I replied, moving so I was walking beside her. "We've had these things since we were babies. Aknon has had that book for around twenty years. Whoever had these, or whoever used magic on them, knew us as babies."

"Back when we were likeable." Aknon snorted. "Back when we didn't have a multitude of enemies all over the land."

"You three were adorable, but I don't think that likeable is the right word." I kept my mouth shut in response to Senka's comment, instead I just sighed and kept walking, rolling around the information we had in my head.